Mixed Land Use and Its Relationship with CO₂ Emissions: A Comparative Analysis Based on Several Typical Development Zones in Shanghai

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper investigates the relationship of mixed urban and industrial land uses and carbon dioxide emission. A study area, different development zones in the Shanghai area are used.

The English of the paper should be improved. Although it is understandable, the grammar is not always correct and the sentence structure makes the whole text clumsy and sometimes difficult to read. The text uses terms which are not common in the international scientific community like carbon emission (should be: carbon dioxide emission), natural discontinuity method (maybe: natural break classification or Jenks’ method) just to mention a few. These terms should be replaced.

The introduction addresses the main concepts used in the study (mixed land use degree, compatibility of different land uses, accessibility, combining time and space, relating CO2 emission to land use), although they are not addressed with the same importance in later chapters. In particular, the reasoning for “combining space and time” is rather weak and should be improved.

Abbreviations which maybe are not known to all reader should be written out used for the first time (CA = cellular automates)

All in all, the introduction gives a sufficient overview of the stat-of-the-art research in the different topics addresses in the paper.

 

As the base of the study is the land use data, more details about the data should be given. What is the level of detail? Resolution? Attributes used? What is meant by “the land use information was modified and improved”? What kind of improvement? It is totally unclear, what exactly has been used as input data. But without the exact knowledge of the input, all the processing and calculations are questionable and not comprehensible.

Table 2: the classification classes need better explanation. What is the meaning of the class numbers? How have the classes been determined?

As the energy consumption as only available for the total development zones, their resolution is not compatible to the land use resolution. This the results will be quite generalized. This should be mentioned and explained more in detail.

 

For figure 4 some explanation should be added to help the reader in the interpretation of the maps. It seems, that e.g., the road network can be clearly seen as pattern with a high “mixing degree”. Here may be a comparison with the real situation (for instance using satellite images) may help in the interpretation.

The English of the paper should be improved. Although it is understandable, the grammar is not always correct and the sentence structure makes the whole text clumsy and sometimes difficult to read.

Author Response

Reviewer 1#:

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. The paper investigates the relationship of mixed urban and industrial land uses and carbon dioxide emission. A study area, different development zones in the Shanghai area are used.

The English of the paper should be improved. Although it is understandable, the grammar is not always correct and the sentence structure makes the whole text clumsy and sometimes difficult to read. The text uses terms which are not common in the international scientific community like carbon emission (should be: carbon dioxide emission), natural discontinuity method (maybe: natural break classification or Jenks’ method) just to mention a few. These terms should be replaced.

Response：Okay. We have replaced these terms according to your recommendations.

2. The introduction addresses the main concepts used in the study (mixed land use degree, compatibility of different land uses, accessibility, combining time and space, relating CO2 emission to land use), although they are not addressed with the same importance in later chapters. In particular, the reasoning for “combining space and time” is rather weak and should be improved.

Response：Okay. First, we have already added some arguments in this paragraph. Second, in Introduction, we have added the analysis on the research status and shortcomings of the relationship between mixed land use and carbon emissions. Third, in Discussion, we have added the section 3.2.

3. Abbreviations which maybe are not known to all reader should be written out used for the first time (CA = cellular automates).

Response：Okay. We have supplemented it.

4. All in all, the introduction gives a sufficient overview of the stat-of-the-art research in the different topics addresses in the paper.

Response：Thank you for your comment.

5. As the base of the study is the land use data, more details about the data should be given. What is the level of detail? Resolution? Attributes used? What is meant by “the land use information was modified and improved”? What kind of improvement? It is totally unclear, what exactly has been used as input data. But without the exact knowledge of the input, all the processing and calculations are questionable and not comprehensible.

 Response：Okay. We have made the following additional remarks.

The basic data of this article is the result of vectorization according to the actual land use of the development zones, including the development zone name, land type, user, service life, building area and other attributes, and the accuracy is plot level. In the basic data, the land use types of the development zones are roughly divided according to the built-up status: For the built-up areas, the land use types are subdivided into residential land, industrial land, storage land, street land, other transportation land, public and service land, park and green land, and other public service land and so on (Table 2). For unbuilt-up areas, land use types are subdivided into rural residential land, rural industrial land, rural storage land, rural road, cultivated land, forest land, agricultural facility land and so on. In development zones, they are mainly based on whether the conditions for land supply are met.

This paper uses China's land use classification standard (GB/T 21010-2017) and vector graphics, and divides the industrial land into the Class 1, Class 2 and Class 3 according to "land users".

Due to the long processing period of the Third National Land Survey data, there may be inconsistency with the land use status at the end of 2020, so the historical remote sensing image data was used to make some corrections. In addition, due to the rapid development of the development zones, some areas are actually under construction, and this paper argues that their utilization degree is different from that of built-up areas and other rural lands, and the identification of these plots is also based on remote sensing images.

6. Table 2: the classification classes need better explanation. What is the meaning of the class numbers? How have the classes been determined?

 Response：The land use type in this paper was obtained by combining basic data and the China’s land use classification standard (GB/T 21010-2017) of the Third National Land Survey. The serial number only represents the secondary classification results of various types of land use under different indicators. For example, residential land in built-up areas and rural residential land in unbuilt-up areas are both residential types, the diversity categories belong to the same category, but the built-up status is different, so the utilization intensity categories are different. The utilization intensity is divided into 5 grades. Please see 2.3.4 for specific classification and assignments.

7. As the energy consumption as only available for the total development zones, their resolution is not compatible to the land use resolution. This the results will be quite generalized. This should be mentioned and explained more in detail.

Response：Okay. We have made a complementary explanation in the text.

Due to the difficulty of data acquisition and statistics, the minimum scale of CO₂ emissions calculation in this paper is the entire development zone. Therefore, the resolution of mixed land use results is reduced to calculate the overall mixed utilization of the development zone, and some conclusions seem to have no particularity are drawn. However, different development zones and different areas within the same development zone have different characteristics of mixed use. This paper aims to verify the importance of mixed use of land by studying the relationship between mixed use of land and CO₂ emissions in development zones.

8. For figure 4 some explanation should be added to help the reader in the interpretation of the maps. It seems, that e.g., the road network can be clearly seen as pattern with a high “mixing degree”. Here may be a comparison with the real situation (for instance using satellite images) may help in the interpretation.

Response：Okay. We have made a complementary explanation for Figure 4 in the text.

It can be seen from Figure 4 that the land use mixing degree of the development zones has the following main characteristics: (1) Minhang Economic and Technological Development Zone (Figure 4 (a)) and Caohejing Hi-Technology Development Zone (Figure 4 (b)) span different zones in space, so the mixing degree of the two areas is quite different, and the mixing degree of the original main area is better than that of the newly developed area. (2) In Shanghai Chemical Industry Development Zone, honeycomb with low mixing degree accounted for most (Figure 4 (c)), but in other development zones, the honeycombs with high mixing degree accounted for more than half of the development zones. (3) There is a strong correlation between accessibility and land use mixing degree. The area with higher accessibility is usually closer to the central urban area, and its land use mixing degree is also higher.

 

9. Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English of the paper should be improved. Although it is understandable, the grammar is not always correct and the sentence structure makes the whole text clumsy and sometimes difficult to read.

Response：Okay. Our revised manuscript has been polished again by AJE.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments:

 

RE: land-2556478 - "Mixed Land Use and its Relationship with Carbon Emissions: A Comparative Analysis Based on Several Typical Development Zones in Shanghai"

 

Journal: Land

Type：Article

 

The topic is interesting, the authors have made an interesting assessment, the subject of mixed land use and carbon emissions fits in the general scope of Land. This paper fails to engage with the wider readership of Land. Any Description and discussions should be beyond the local case itself, otherwise it cannot attract more international readers. It is recommended that the author make substantial changes before re-review.

 

The text of the article is written in a difficult-to-understand wording relatively. Needs extensive English editing work in the subsequent modification. In this regard, it should be noted that my knowledge of English as a reviewer is not strong either.

 

Abstract: The first half of the summary could be more concise. The results structure(1,2,3,4) of the second half (The results show that......) needs to be balanced, for example, the statement (3) is relatively too short.

Introduction: It is suggested that the introduction should focus on the research status and shortcomings of the relationship between Mixed Land Use and Carbon Emissions. There are some minor errors in the reference marking of this part, for instance, “assessing the walking environment 18,21]”(line 78) , a left square brackets is missing.

 

Materials and Methods: The table in this section is not a three-wire table. The marking of coordinates in Figure 1. is not clear, and there is also Chinese in the picture.

In the part 2.2.2, whether it is appropriate to estimate carbon emissions by comprehensive energy consumption?

In the part 2.3, the title and content of 2,3,5 should be at the beginning of this section, that is, explain clearly “the mixing degree of land use is calculated by combining the measurement results of four indices: diversity, accessibility, compatibility and utilization intensity”.

Then give the evaluation of the indicators.

In the description under the formula, the letter subscript format is different from that in the formula. Such as, in the line 221 of part 2.3.1, “and pi represents the proba-”.

The title sequence number level(1. 2. 3.) is inappropriate in the line 230,232,234 of part 2.3.2.

Part 2.4.3 lacks a formula on Calculation of total carbon emissions.

Results: Analysis of mixed land use can be simplified, while Carbon emission analysis results are missing in this section.

 

The discussion is not deep enough and not clear. The discussion needs to be based on the results section of this article and internationalized. For example, the discussion point of “4.1 Compatibility, diversity, utilization intensity and heterogeneity of location” is not explicitly expressed. The discussion in “4.2 Diversity is not the key factor affecting the mixing degree of land use” based on the analysis results of only two regions.

And three discussion sections mainly focused on mixed land use, and there is no discussion on topic of the article: the relationship between mixed land use and carbon emissions.

 

Conclusions: The part (4) seems not to be the conclusion, but the innovation and deficiency of the article. So, a separate secondary heading is suggested.

 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

The text of the article is written in a difficult-to-understand wording relatively. Needs extensive English editing work in the subsequent modification. In this regard, it should be noted that my knowledge of English as a reviewer is not strong either.

Author Response

Reviewer 2#:

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments:

1. The topic is interesting, the authors have made an interesting assessment, the subject of mixed land use and carbon emissions fits in the general scope of Land. This paper fails to engage with the wider readership of Land. Any Description and discussions should be beyond the local case itself, otherwise it cannot attract more international readers. It is recommended that the author make substantial changes before re-review.

Response：Okay. We agree to revise the paper.

2. The text of the article is written in a difficult-to-understand wording relatively. Needs extensive English editing work in the subsequent modification. In this regard, it should be noted that my knowledge of English as a reviewer is not strong either.

Response：Okay. Our revised manuscript has been polished again by AJE.
3. Abstract: The first half of the summary could be more concise. The results structure (1,2,3,4) of the second half (The results show that......) needs to be balanced, for example, the statement (3) is relatively too short.

Response：Okay. We have revised the Abstract according to your suggestions. This includes streamlining the first half and supplementing the results (3).

4. Introduction: It is suggested that the introduction should focus on the research status and shortcomings of the relationship between Mixed Land Use and Carbon Emissions. There are some minor errors in the reference marking of this part, for instance, “assessing the walking environment 18,21]”(line 78) , a left square brackets is missing.

Response：Okay. First, we have added the analysis on the research status and shortcomings of the relationship between mixed land use and carbon emissions. Second, some minor errors in the reference marking have been revised.

5. Materials and Methods: The table in this section is not a three-wire table. The marking of coordinates in Figure 1. is not clear, and there is also Chinese in the picture.

Response：Okay. First, all tables in this article have been revised as three-wire tables. Second, Figure 1 has been redrawn.

6. In the part 2.2.2, whether it is appropriate to estimate carbon emissions by comprehensive energy consumption?

Response：We used industrial energy consumption in the part 2.2.2. The reasons for industrial energy consumption are as follows:

It should be noted that in specific areas such as the development zone, especially the built-up areas within the development zone, industrial economic activity is the main function, as well as the main energy consumer and CO₂ emitter; industrial energy consumption accounts for the majority of all types of energy consumption. In addition, in the unbuilt areas of the development zone, the CO₂ emissions from land use also play a certain role, but the proportion is very small. Table 10 confirms this. Therefore, it is appropriate to use industrial energy consumption to estimate CO₂ emissions.

7. In the part 2.3, the title and content of 2,3,5 should be at the beginning of this section, that is, explain clearly “the mixing degree of land use is calculated by combining the measurement results of four indices: diversity, accessibility, compatibility and utilization intensity”. Then give the evaluation of the indicators.

Response：Okay. We have added this sentence before the evaluation of the indicators.

8. In the description under the formula, the letter subscript format is different from that in the formula. Such as, in the line 221 of part 2.3.1, “and pi represents the proba-”.

Response：Okay. We have modified it.

9. The title sequence number level (1. 2. 3.) is inappropriate in the line 230,232,234 of part 2.3.2.

Response：Okay. We have revised the title sequence number level.

10. Part 2.4.3 lacks a formula on calculation of total carbon emissions.

Response：Okay. We have added a formula (11) for calculating the total CO₂ emissions.

11. Results: Analysis of mixed land use can be simplified, while Carbon emission analysis results are missing in this section.

Response：Okay. We have simplified the analysis of mixed land use and added the analysis results of CO₂ emissions, including the addition of Table 10 and related analysis.

12. The discussion is not deep enough and not clear. The discussion needs to be based on the results section of this article and internationalized. For example, the discussion point of “4.1 Compatibility, diversity, utilization intensity and heterogeneity of location” is not explicitly expressed. The discussion in “4.2 Diversity is not the key factor affecting the mixing degree of land use” based on the analysis results of only two regions.

Response：Okay. We have improved the Discussion section, including the subtitles (4.1 The Relationship between Location and Mixed Land Use Is Diverse and Heterogeneous; 4.2 Can Diversity Be Used As the A Key Index To Measure the Mixing Degree of Land Use?) and the related elaboration. Please see the revised manuscript. 

13. And three discussion sections mainly focused on mixed land use, and there is no discussion on topic of the article: the relationship between mixed land use and carbon emissions.

Response：We have already made some additions in this regard. Please see the section 4.4 The relationship between mixed land use and carbon dioxide emissions.

14. Conclusions: The part (4) seems not to be the conclusion, but the innovation and deficiency of the article. So, a separate secondary heading is suggested.

Response：Okay. We have set up separate secondary headings according to your advice, i.e., 5.1 Conclusions and 5.2 Prospect.

15. Comments on the Quality of English Language

The text of the article is written in a difficult-to-understand wording relatively. Needs extensive English editing work in the subsequent modification. In this regard, it should be noted that my knowledge of English as a reviewer is not strong either.

Response：Okay. Our revised manuscript has been polished again by AJE.